(by Barbara Sapienza)
She squeezed the meat through her fingers. They glistened. The yellow of the yolk slid through—knew just where the egg needed to go to make the texture stick together. She used two fingers to scoop up a wad of beef into her palm where it rolled around in both hands, squishing into a round ball that she dropped into the hot oil to sizzle. Another scoop—then another churn in the palms of her hands.
Another plop. Another scoop.
Another plop. Another scoop.
Another plop.
The number of meatballs grew, sizzling together in the hot oil. Like what?
Like children in the hot pool on a summer's day, sizzling in the water, their hands cutting through like sharks, wanting nothing to do with frying meat. They don’t know that together they too boil in their own stew, cooking in the hot sun like little meatballs.
Hands. The same hands she used to pinch the baby's round cheeks, to change her diapers, to rub Johnson’s on the red rash of her bottom.
She used those hands to pull the fine threads of red and gold and green to embroider the flowers on the tablecloth that would grace the table where the tuna and mayo sandwiches waited—the ones she made for the girl's lunch.
Hands she lifted to the sky and twirled when she danced and flew around the kitchen to the old bands she knew as a young bride. Was it Tommy Dorsey?
Hands she sits on now to hide the raw knuckles, swelling with arthritis. She wants to hide them.
“Useless,” she says.
“Mamma, touch my face like you used to. Remember how you loved to squeeze my cheeks?” the girl says.
Mamma looks into the girl’s eyes, questioning. Then she slowly unfolds her hands from beneath her lap to rub the girl’s cheeks.
Gone now, the girl searches her dreams and finds her in the Himalayas near Ama Dablam.
Where are we? The space is open. No ceilings except blue sky. Openness with geometric peaks far off in the distance. But not so far as to pull her away from the land across the sky where women work at the fires, building a crisp crackle with the smell of wood dried and carried on their backs to the base camp. Women speak quietly about the tikka masala and the baingan bharta they will make for the carriers. They gesture with eyes and arms to their peers who know what to bring to the fire. The food carried to 17,000 feet by men and women—some barefoot, wearing colorful dresses and hats with pompoms and even bells hanging from their vests. Their faces tanned from the high hot sun.
Where am I? I look at the group of younger women my age. I don't know their names nor do I speak their language, but together they form a circle, doing this outdoor kitchen work.
What am I doing here? I move toward the circle, wanting to enter. They work as a team. With few words, they set up the pots and pans and tables with the carriers, their brothers, who have lugged the kitchen to the staging place. I saddle up to them, almost understanding the chief cook who speaks to a younger woman. “Take it out and add yak milk,” she says. The younger girl looks toward her coworker and points to the animal whose teats need to be milked. I slink over toward the hairy animal whose teats fill a woman’s hands. Bent, she squeezes under the yak, squeezing and pulling down and up as a fine stream of white milk fills a yellow wooden bucket.
Her back and shoulders rounded as she bends down. Her face resting on the yak’s side. She wears a flowery apron, her feet in fluffy pink slippers as hairy as the yak’s. She's talking in a language they understand, a kind of grunt.
“Get your tits here, girl,” she tells the yak as she milks her in her hands—the way she folds the wet beef into tiny meatballs. She's pretty and hums a mountain song, or is it Tommy Dorsey? She's happy here, and when the woman starts to yodel a mountain song, she joins in. She's yodeling now as she milks the yak.
I step closer to her and see she is a young version of Gloria, my mother. She has transcended her pink kitchen with the black and white tiles in Boston where her immigrant grandparents arrived in the early 1900s, and risen in stature to a land 17,000 feet in altitude where Ama Dablam and Everest smile in the distance. She is a mountain mama now. I move closer to her and touch her shoulder. She looks at me and winks, continuing her work in the kitchen of the sky, yodeling and pulling on the soft teats to fill the bucket with sweet milk for the hikers who will scale the mountains. She is a feeder. Like a yak, she gives her milk to others, singing while she does it.
I look at the others in the circle, seeming also to be content to feed others. They chatter with each other.
“Look at the woman bent near the yak,” they say. “She's so agile with her hands.”
“She'll work out,” another says. “She'll just have to get rid of those pink slippers.”
“But she smokes like a man.”
“I like that. I wouldn't be surprised if she manages the animals for us. Ha-ha.” They laugh.
“I think she'll be managing us soon. She has that look about her.”
“And who is the girl standing beside her?”
“Oh, that's her loving daughter, checking up to see where she went when she left.”
“Ah, I see.”
“What do you see?”
“I see love.”
With that, the girl turns and starts to walk away to a lower altitude. But not before she turns around and blows a kiss.
---
Barbara Sapienza is a retired clinical psychologist who paints and writes novels including Anchor Out, The Laundress, and The Girl in the White Cape. She lives with her husband in Sausalito, California, inspired by children, granddaughters, and nature. She can be found at www.barbarasapienza.com.
Mamma’s Meatballs
1 lb. of freshly ground beef
1 egg
1 clove minced garlic
salt and pepper
2 T. Parmigiana Reggiano
4 slices white bread, soaked in water, then drained
olive oil or lard for frying
slice of onion
spaghetti, rigatoni, or fusilli, cooked al dente
Combine ground beef, egg, garlic, salt, pepper, and Parmigiano.
Squeeze with fingers of both hands.
Squish the soaked bread to get all the water out and add it to the beef mixture, mixing until you can no longer see the white bread anymore.
Form meatballs about the size of golf balls.
In a frying pan, melt enough lard to coat the bottom of the pan and sauté a slice of onion, or use olive oil to shallow-fry the meatballs.
After the meatballs were fried and before they were dropped into a pot of sauce, we stole them and filled our mouths.
Yes, I remember my mother every time I cook. I remember her hands in the meatballs, her delight in the senses: touch, smell, and taste; the harsh love in her raspy voice; her pink mops on her feet; the cigarette between her lips. These gifts of love meld into me, as I begin to see her on the other side.
Comments